Get your facts first

and then you can distort them as much as you please.– Mark Twain

Are U.S. forestlands “currently being lost at a rate of 150-million acres annually”?

An RSS feed from the Pacific Forest Trust titled, “New Climate Research Supports Forest Protection, Reveals CO2 Storage Potential of Temperate Forests” caught my eye a few weeks back. The words “Forest Protection” always worry me. (Which forests might need protecting? If we are discussing second-growth forests, then I recommend continued harvesting because placing second-growth forests off-limits increases pressure on primary forests. See The Wisdom of Zero-Cut page.) I noted that the writer of the article had an advanced degree in forestry so I held off judgment.
In the post, he extolls the value of our temperate U.S. forests carbon storage capicity:

“Temperate U.S. forests currently sequester more than 884 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually…[and] are responsible for removing more than 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually.”

So far so good. The number of metric tons sounds reasonable. The United States has 749 million acres of forest (Source: Forest Resources of the United States, 2002) and I know from my fire training that one acre of dry grass has about one ton of fuel (an English ton weighs close to a metric ton), one acre of trees should be able to fix a similar tonnage at least.

And as most writers would, he includes a warning before the call to action:

“U.S. forestlands are currently being lost at a rate of 150-million acres annually, along with their climate benefits.”

This would be very troubling if true. After all, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that deforestation contributes nearly 20% of the overall greenhouse gases (GHG) entering the atmosphere (see their news release).

It also constitutes a major acceleration in forest loss. From 1630-1900, approximately 300 million acres of US forestland were converted to other uses (source: Forest Resources of the United States, 2002). The rate given in the post would equal the change (300 million acres) in only two years.

Not According to the UN or the USDA.

No. Given that rate of loss, the 749 million acres of forestland in the U.S. will be lost in FIVE years. 150 million acres would be a wooded area the size of California and Washington states combined, that’s a lot of forest. We ought to be seeing smoke from wildfires in the air and logging trucks clogging the highways.

It’s possible that the writer picked up the figure from a non-peer reviewed report such as an environmental organization website or media outlet. The internet can act like an echo chamber with claims and counter-claims.

Tom Knudson wrote in his 2001 series, Environment, Inc.,

“Competition [by environmental groups] for money and members is keen…slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”

Here are the facts:

U.S. forest land area has actually increased recently

from 747 to 749 million acres (0.3 percent) between 1997 and 2002, continuing a slight upward trend in area beginning in the late 1980s. (Source: Forest Resources of the United States, 2002)

I have emailed both the post’s author and the Pacific Forest Trust asking for the source material for this claim. I have yet to hear back from either one. It’s now been more than two weeks.

If I get a response, I’ll let you know and I’ll include a link to the research.

To read the report cited by the Pacific Forest Trust blog see the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ report: Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change – A Global Assessment Report.

References:

1. U.S., Department of Agriculture, Forest Resources of the United States, 2002: A Technical Document Supporting the USDA Forest Service 2005 Update of the RPA Assessment by W. Brad Smith, Patrick D. Miles, John S. Vissage, And Scott A. Pugh.
2. United Nations, Food And Agriculture Organization, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005, 2006
3. Forest Identity paper on the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) website

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